Goal

The current administration adopts more friendly immigration policies. We want to help people to discover visa-friendly companies and land their first job in the U.S. by looking at the location, industry, number of visa applications, and visa certified rates, so that job seekers can seize opportunities before the immigration policies change in the future.

Data

  1. Source: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/jboysen/us-perm-visas

  2. The data contains information on H1B visa applications roughly between 2006-2016.

  3. For this analysis, we cleaned and used the data between 2014 and 2016.

  4. The clean data has 162,442 observations and 24 variables (see below).

##  [1] "case_no"                       "case_received_date"           
##  [3] "case_status"                   "class_of_admission"           
##  [5] "country_of_citizenship"        "decision_date"                
##  [7] "employer_name"                 "employer_num_employees"       
##  [9] "employer_state"                "employer_yr_estab"            
## [11] "foreign_worker_info_education" "foreign_worker_info_state"    
## [13] "job_info_education"            "job_info_job_title"           
## [15] "job_info_work_state"           "pw_amount_9089"               
## [17] "pw_job_title_908"              "pw_unit_of_pay_9089"          
## [19] "us_economic_sector"            "wage_offer_from_9089"         
## [21] "wage_offer_to_9089"            "wage_offer_unit_of_pay_9089"  
## [23] "wage_offered_unit_of_pay_9089" "year"

Trend

  1. Looking at the data on visa applications , we noticed that:

    • there were 162,442 working visa (H1B) applications sponsored by 29,884 companies in the U.S. between 2014 and 2016.

    • tightened immigration policies from 2017 to 2021 and the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 would also influence the number of applications.

  2. Between 2021 and 2022, H1B visa applications has increased by 56.8 % (https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/h1b-visa-program-fact-sheet)

    • Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, foreign-born workers in the United States in 2021 made up 17.4 percent of the total workforce.

    • From 2020 to 2021, the foreign-born labor force increased by 671,000. (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf)

    • Sponsoring H1B visas is the primary way to acquire foreign professionals.

Assumption

  1. Companies do not have significant change in their operation and Human Resources policies after 2016.

  2. The immigration policies remain the same under the current administration.

  3. The demand in the labor market does not decline severely due to fluctuating economy.

Summary

  1. Over 50% of visa-friendly companies are located in 6 states

    • West: California

    • Northeast: New York, New Jersey

    • Southwest: Texas

    • Southeast: Florida

    • Midwest: Illinois

  2. New Jersey and Florida have relatively lower wage offers given their high cost of living.

  3. A Master’s degree gives you more opportunities in the job market. You can apply for 80% of jobs (2014-2016).

  4. Top 10 hirers are Technology, Consulting and IT companies in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Washington.

  5. Apply to companies with higher visa certified rate.

  6. Other visa-friendly industries are Advanced Manufacturing, Finance, Educational Services, and Health Care.

Analysis

Do you have friends or colleagues from other countries who work in the U.S.? What are their job titles?

According to the data between 2014 and 2016, your friends could be software engineers, system analysts, or senior managers in California, Washington or Oregon.

Where are companies that provide those jobs?

  1. Visa-friendly companies are disproportionately located on the west and east coast.

  2. The more companies in a state , the more job opportunities (before the pandemic and prevalence of working-from-home)

  3. A median of 38% of jobs required a Master’s degree, and 42% of jobs required a Bachelor’s degree.

Top 26 states where visa-friendly companiess are located.

  1. 57.3% of visa friendly employers are in 6 states:

    • California ——(19.6%)

    • New York ——(11.8%)

    • Texas ——(9.3%)

    • New Jersey ——(6.4%)

    • Florida ——(5.4%)

    • Illinois ——(4.8%)

  2. Washington (1.8%) ranks No.14, and Oregon (0.6%) ranks No.26.

Wage offers in the top 6 states

  1. The average wage increases gradually while the difference between wage offers in each states remain unchanged.

  2. Difference between wage offers:

    • New York has the widest wage range around $36,000.

    • $28,000~$29,000 in California, Texas, and Illinois.

    • $20,000~$21,000 in New Jersey and Florida

  3. Professionals with Master’s degrees receive lower wage offers in Florida despite its higher cost of living.

Who are the top 10 hirers and their location?

  1. COGNIZANT TECHNOLOGY is the No.1 hirer. It’s an American multinational IT service company founded in 1944 in India.

  2. 5 out of top 10 companies are in CA.

  3. Hi-Tech, IT and Consulting companies are more visa-friendly.

Around 23,000 H1B visas are sponsored by top 10 hirers in 4 states
Based on the data between 2014 and 2016
State Visa Applications
CA 9145
TX 8565
WA 4271
PA 1034

Among the top 10 companies, who has higher H1B visa certified rates?

  1. Cognizant Technology has the highest visa certified rate of 64.8%. A higher certified rate means the company secures more visas for its employees.

  2. Infosys,Microsoft,and Cisco have higher certified-expired rates, which means H1B visa status changes for various reasons, such as employee turnover or getting a green card. We need more data to understand the cause of higher visa expired rates.

  3. Low withdrawn and denied rates mean the companies are more supportive to their employees during visa application process.

Interested in other industries?

Advanced Manufacturing, Finance, Educational Services, and Health Care industries could be your options.

IT industry is the most visa friendly.
Based on the available data between 2014 and 2016
Economic Sector Visa Applications Percentage
IT 19806 42.26
Advanced Mfg 6935 14.80
Other Economic Sector 5098 10.88
Finance 3843 8.20
Educational Services 3623 7.73
Health Care 2378 5.07
Retail 1714 3.66
Aerospace 1606 3.43
Energy 404 0.86
Automotive 329 0.70
Transportation 309 0.66
Construction 297 0.63
Hospitality 189 0.40
Biotechnology 181 0.39
Agribusiness 63 0.13
Geospatial 58 0.12
Homeland Security 39 0.08